The Lighter Frigate Debate: A Look "Under the Hood"

"Was I to die this moment, 'Want of Frigates' would be found stamped on my heart. No words of mine can express what I have, and am suffering for want of them."

-Horatio Nelson, August 1798

As those who have read my musings on the "lighter frigate" in the past may already know my views on the British government's plan, laid down in the 2015 strategic defence and security review, have been mixed. To some extent I continue to blow hot and cold on the issue. It is now apparent, to me at least, that there is risk inherent in all courses of action when it comes to replacing the Royal Navy's thirteen aging Type 23 frigates. The earlier plan, to build thirteen Type 26 frigates, appears to have fallen afoul of cost and potentially timescale issues. We can criticise the decision to cap the Type 26 build run at the eight anti-submarine configured hulls all we like, but the reality appears to be that BAE's construction yards on the Clyde could not deliver Type 26 at the required tempo without very significant investment (the "frigate factory"). One shipbuild per year was needed to replace the Type 23s as they leave service, without a significant decline in RN escort numbers, whereas the yard currently appears to be scaled for one Type 26 scale shipbuild per 1.5 years.

Presuming that BAE could have delivered at the specified rate of one Type 26 build every 1.5 years it would have resulted in a dramatic decline in the RN's number of escorts, with no realistic chance of recovery until the early 2040s. It would also have likely resulted in a concurrent construction programme, using the same yards, with the Type 45's replacement in the mid-late 2030s. This would have required the Clyde yards to at least double their output of complex warships, a hard ask indeed.

The 13 Type 26 option clearly had some significant problems of its own. It was by no means an "easy" option, requiring a 33% higher build rate than BAE were required to provide under their Terms of Business Agreement with the government, significant investment in new facilities to achieve that higher build rate. Coupled with a higher rate of orders than the MoD was likely capable of funding, without compromising other programmes and we've probably explained the majority of the "witches' brew" that produced the 2015 decision to cap Type 26 at eight hulls and build five or more "lighter frigates".

It's fair to say that this decision has caused more than its fair share of controversy amongst defence commentators. During these early stages hard facts have been very thin on the ground. Most of what we have to go on is based on a few "powerpoint" design concepts put out by BAE, BMT Defence Services and Stellar Systems and Sir John Parker's recommendations for reforming the UK military shipbuilding sector. Bluntly, it isn't a lot and until the government releases its "National Shipbuilding Strategy" at some point soon(ish) we will continue to speculate about the "Lighter Frigate/General Purpose Frigate/Type 31/Type 31e", mostly in the dark. 

It's been suggested that the Lighter Frigate essentially amounts to the "anyone but BAE" option and is a means of undermining their near-monopolistic position in UK military shipbuilding. For some commentators this prospect is deeply worrying, having the potential to fatally undermine the two remaining complex military shipbuilding sites in the country by starving them of orders. For others BAE's monopoly is painted as "the problem" and one of the key reasons why UK-built warships are more expensive than their overseas equivalents. I'm, personally, more inclined to agree with the former position. However, I also see the need for the Lighter Frigate and recognise that it isn't an entirely bad idea from several standpoints.

Firstly, even with a 25% slower build tempo, one Lighter Frigate every two years, escort numbers remain relatively stable; dipping to lows of only 18. 

Secondly, 8 Type 26 at 1.5 year intervals dovetail neatly with the projected start of the Type 45 replacement programme without the need for concurrency. This indicates to me that the "Lighter Frigate undermines BAE" argument may be too harsh. There is a steady stream of the sort of high-end complex warship building work that BAE provides on the Clyde available for those yards well into the future. 

Thirdly, one of the most astute criticisms is that bringing the Lighter Frigate from the concept stage, where we are at present, to a full-fledged design able to be built is going to take time and cost money. This is absolutely the case and where much of the risk lies. However, it is not impossible to design and develop a surface escort to a constrained timescale. Doing so may actually help avoid the problems which emerge when a steady stream of additions and amendemnts are made to a design specification the longer it takes to bring it to fruition. A process that, as Type 26 demonstrates, can add significantly to development costs. It may also limit the scope for bespoke or "revolutionary" components, with designers forced to turn to off the shelf equipment and machinery. A more constrained timescale for designing the Lighter Frigate may actually prove beneficial if it produces a well-executed, but conservative, design.

An earlier and much more modest iteration of Type 26

Fourth, there is justified concern about the viability of the proposed "block build" approach that is intended to spread work to other, smaller, yards around the UK. There are evidently issues with this approach related to the shortage of yards with the necessary skilled workforce, equipment and facilities to efficiently build blocks for a complex surface combatant. While work on blocks for the carriers appears to be a positive indication of their skills and capacity to deliver, it remains to be seen if a similar model can be made to work for the Lighter Frigate. The other issue with this approach is the apparent lack of a suitable "integration yard" (where the blocks are assembled into a functioning warship).

"The vessel should be assembled in a shipyard, backed by a company or alliance with sufficient financial and industrial capacity and capability to construct and commission and enter into the key sub-contracts."

-Parker Report, 2016

There are a very limited set of options on this front. While Sir John Parker's report suggests that BAE should concentrate their efforts on Type 26 their yards on the Clyde would be an obvious option, provided that the risk of concurrently building Type 26 and integrating blocks for the Lighter Frigate could be mitigated. Unfortunately viable alternatives are very thin on the ground. Babcock international's Appledore yard is too small and their Rosyth yard, where the carriers have been constructed, is soon to become the hub for UK nuclear submarine decommissioning. Cammel Laird on Merseyside have the facilities but likely lack the skilled workforce necessary to integrate a complex warship. Their performance constructing the UK polar research ship RRS David Attenborough may give some indication of just how capable they are in this regard. Harland and Wolff's yard in Belfast is large enough, but the company hasn't built ships (let alone anything as complex as a warship) for years, having diversified heavily into the offshore wind sector. Other "options", such as re-opening the Portsmouth construction yard, are little more than fantasy.

The options for the integration yard are extremely limited, realistically boiling down to BAE on the Clyde and Cammel Laird. The latter being a much more risky option that would almost certainly require a consortium that included BAE, to bring their skills and experience to bear, in order to make it work. It would also likely require an expansion and upskilling of Cammel Laird's modestly-sized workforce. Ultimately it might be better to focus efforts on a single complex builder, BAE on the Clyde. However, this could introduce risks to the Type 26 programme. The optimal means of mitigating those risks might be to use BAE as an assembly yard only for the Lighter Frigate, keeping all fabrication activities seperate by farming them out to the smaller yards.

Cammel Laird's yard in Merseyside

If the UK government is serious about building up a second complex military shipbuilder, it needs to consider the implications on continued investment in the Royal Navy and Fleet Auxiliary that will be necessary to sustain two yards. In shipbuilding consistent investment and orders are critical. It will be no different in this case than it is with BAE.

Overall, the Lighter Frigate is simultaneously necessary and difficult to realise. Contrary to some commentators' views, I'm firm in my belief that 13 Type 26 isn't the "magic wand" answer to this problem. A long-term failure to invest in military shipbuilding has led us to a place where there are no easy options. Blaming all of our woes on BAE's monopoly is unhelpful and disguises systematic failures in the government's military industrial strategy. "Competition" isn't a magic wand either, undermining BAE with no real alternative would be the height of irresponsibility. The only way to make a semi-competitive military shipbuilding system work would be to build a significantly larger Royal Navy, able to naturally support more than one major yard. In the author's opinion, the optimum solution would be to use BAE's Clyde yards as the integrator for the Lighter Frigate. Accepting the risk to Type 26 by giving BAE the confidence to invest seriously in their yards and expand the workforce to cope with concurrent builds. The alternative, Cammel Laird, is probably just too much of a leap in the dark at this stage. 

In the end this is about providing the navy with the number of ships it needs to carry out its duties while maintaining a sustainable military shipbuilding sector. 

Oh, and the idea that the UK will export loads of these things is probably bollocks.

21st Century Cruisers, the future of the Royal Navy?

Pictured above is HMS Blake, one of three Tiger class cruisers laid down for the Royal Navy at the end of the Second World War and completed in the early 1950s. She was the last warship in British service to be officially designated a cruiser. Equipped with quick-firing six and three inch guns, Sea Cat anti aircraft missiles and, later in her career, a large hangar for anti submarine helicopters; she remained a well-rounded surface combatant throughout her career, often in spite of her age. Why, you might ask, is a ship that was designed during WWII and decommissioned in 1979 at all relevant to the future of the Royal Navy?

Before the Second World War the RN was predominantly a "cruiser navy ", holding down a range of global deployments with its 15 heavy and 41 light cruisers. These ships had endurance and combat power at the core of their designs, each could operate alone for extended periods, effectively defend itself in most circumstances and demonstrate the interest or resolve of the government in a particular region. The ensuing World War and the Cold War radically changed the type of warships the RN needed. Instead of cruisers built for endurance and complex warfighting the navy built a profusion of smaller frigates and destroyers, mainly to guard convoys and fight submarines close to the UK and in the North Atlantic. To carry out these tasks the navy could make do with smaller, cheaper, ships with relatively shorter legs and far less ability to act independently in high threat environments. Trade-offs like these were made in order to ensure the navy got enough escorts to protect the convoys which would be vital to Britain's survival in the event of a war; and to hunt the Soviet ballistic missile submarines that threatened NATO. These were ships designed to act as part of a military system that would defeat the threat posed by hostile submarines. This system also included land based aircraft, anti submarine helicopters, aircraft and helicopter carriers and the enormous US/NATO SOSUS fixed sonar array. The Leander class is probably the most famous example of these sort of light frigates, operated by the RN into the early 1990s. When the immediate and pressing threat from submarines operating in the North Atlantic, be they German or Soviet, ceased to exist so the naval forces the UK had constructed to defeat them also fell by the wayside.These ships were, broadly speaking, a product of their time and a deviation from the much older structure that had served the RN well for centuries. This structure consisted of a core "battle fleet", made up of capital ships; mainly there to act as a deterrent, supported by powerful forward deployed cruisers that conducted most of the day to day activity.

HMS Euryalus, one of 26 Leander Class frigates built for the RN

By modern standards almost all of the cheap and numerous frigates and destroyers of the past, even the excellent Leanders, would be classed as lightly armed corvettes. The simple fact was that these cheap and numerous ships sacrificed a lot of capability in order to achieve the affordability necessary to build them in numbers. They were still recognisable as frigates built in the convoy escort mold. Similarly the Type 42 anti-aircraft warfare destroyers, in service from the mid-1970s, were also a design that compromised range and armament for numbers. At only 3500 tonnes the Batch 1 Type 42s were clearly a very light and economical design. When compared with their American counterparts, the 8000 tonne Spruance class, it's clear that these ships sacrificed range and armament for economy and numbers. Both the Leanders and the Type 42s are recognisable as frigates and destroyers, light warships designed to act in groups and alongside other warships, auxiliaries and aircraft to be effective in combat. The closest the RN came to "cruiser" designs during the Cold War were the eight County Class missile destroyers commissioned in the early 1960s and HMS Bristol, the sole survivor of the pre-1968 carrier escort programme. While these destroyer classes were cruiser-like in some aspects, they carried a far more comprehensive armament and had a greater range (in terms of fuel) than their contemporaries, they lacked the self-sustainment ability, protection, survivability and range of "true" cruisers. While Bristol was initially labelled a light cruiser by Jane's, the Royal Navy always saw her for what she was: an oversize missile destroyer with the similar limitations to the navy's other destroyers.

HMS Bristol, the closest the RN came to a new cruiser during the Cold War

With the later Type 22 and 23 frigates the RN moved to fewer, more individually capable, platforms. This change was partly necessitated by the introduction of a new generation of bigger towed array sonars which required larger ships to operate effectively. Despite their greatly improved self defence ability, achieved by fitting the Sea Wolf point defence missile system, these ships were still designed to be expendable escorts and lacked the endurance of cruisers. That said, these two classes signalled the start of the navy's shift from a fleet of numerous, small and cheap escorts to fewer, larger ships capable of independent operations in a high threat environment.

This brings us right up to the present day situation, with the RN currently operating nineteen high end surface escorts: six Type 45 destroyers and thirteen Type 23 frigates. It is expected that the first of a new class of escorts, the Type 26 "global combat ship ",  will be ordered in the upcoming SDSR. These ships, and the Type 45s before them, constitute a step-change in the navy's design approach to its surface combatants. Both classes are recognisably cruiser-like ships at around 8000 tonnes, with nearly double the endurance of their predecessors (giving them a similar range to WWII light cruisers). The smaller crews of these ships has improved their ability to act autonomously for extended periods, with far less support needed from auxiliary tankers and stores ships. They have the potential for an extensive armament suitable for power projection and can individually defend themselves and other ships from a variety of threats. This potential will be realised from the start with the Type 26, however, the Type 45s currently lack the Mk.41 strike-length VLS cells they were "fitted for but not with". That said, the RN has been working to integrate ballistic missile defence software with the Type 45s existing air defence radars, this suggests that the long-term intention may very well be to fit the 12 strike-length cells; in order to make use of the american SM-3 anti-ballistic missile and a next-generation anti ship missile (which will eventually replace the RN's aging Harpoon system). With access to the range of weaponry available for the Mk.41 launcher Type 45 has the potential to develop from a dedicated anti-aircraft platform into a more well rounded general purpose surface combatant, or it could be utilised as a more specialised AAW/ballistic missile defence platform.

The Type 26 frigate and Type 45 destroyer, RN cruisers for the 21st century.

Extrapolating current trends leads to a pretty clear vision for the RN's future surface escort fleet: large powerful ships capable of a very broad range of independent action. These ships will require fewer auxiliaries to support, relying instead on their ability to range much further from their bases in the UK and Bahrain. More of the existing auxiliary fleet will be needed to support the UK's new carrier group when it participates in high-intensity operations, this will likely be achieved by reducing the need to support the escort fleet to the extent we currently do. While the navy will almost certainly continue to describe it's major surface combatants as frigates and destroyers, the line between the two will only be the anti-submarine equipment carried by the "frigates" and the area air defence equipment of the "destroyers". Both classes will, in effect, be specialised cruisers; bearing little resemblance to their immediate or historical predecessors. The Royal Navy seems to be returning to it's historical structure, a forward-deployed "cruising navy" supported by a potent UK-based "battle fleet" consisting of Carriers and nuclear powered attack submarines. While HMS Blake may have been the last ship the RN operated that was officially designated a cruiser, the navy currently has six distinctly cruiser-like ships, and plans to build thirteen more. The future of the navy lies in two classes of what are, in effect, 21st century cruisers.